I wish they would break that down more. Are the results the same across public/private/cc/technical? Are they the same across those who have loans and those who don’t? Are they the same across those who had parental assistance and those who don’t?
I know the reasons many aren’t happy with their college choice - high debt and not challenging/interesting enough studies seems to match what I hear. Average debt does too, but those with average debt or less aren’t those who feel they have high debt.
The number with no parental assistance doesn’t surprise me either. I suspect many of those have higher debt. It’d be nice to see stats on it though.
The number of applications and acceptances definitely fits the norm at my school. Not many apply to more than 5-6 and several apply to four or fewer.
I wonder if they’re counting the cc students with transfers. If so, that skews the data as, yeah, you have to transfer if starting at a cc and wanting a four year degree (at least around here one has to).
I am so so happy my third transferred. He was unhappy with the advisors, unhappy with the profs, unhappy with the TAs not terribly thrilled with the other kids in his major. Loved everything else about the uni and was a club officer in one of the largest campus clubs but you are there for the education and I respected that. When the one prof he liked and would drop in on retired my son transferred and found his niche in an unexpected place through talking with kids in an internship he was in the summer he decided to leave. Kids should not be afraid to transfer if their reasons are sound.
Seems like the survey did not ask whether the students had other choices when choosing college to begin with (although it mentions that, on average, they applied to 4 and were admitted to 2).
For example, it is entirely possible that, of the 35% who wished they went to a different school, some of them:
A. Did not get admitted to any other school, so they had no choice. (consider all of the students posting threads in April about not getting admitted anywhere except their safety…)
B. Could not afford any other school that admitted them (even though they school they chose was dissatisfying in terms of cost).
C. Were forced by parents to attend the school they attended.
You really need a societal control study here in order to learn whether any of this is relevant.
What percentage of people wish they’d chosen a different spouse- or not gotten married at all? That’s a big number- witness our divorce rate. What percentage of people wish they’d chosen a different career? Also high, since most people today do not end up in the field they started in, or make numerous switches throughout their lives.
I think you’d find that in general, there is some core group (I won’t hazard a guess but I surmise that it’s not a trivial number) who regardless of what life choices they make, are going to be unhappy with those choices and wish they’d chosen something else.
In addition to all of the usual reasons, in the age of FOMO and seeing your high school friends on Instagram having all the fun in the world* at their schools, this number doesn’t surprise me at all.
I’ll throw in that a lot of changes happen between 18 and 22. What the 18 year old really wanted may no longer fit the bill for the 22 year old. I’ve got one who wishes she’d chosen a bigger school with more “stuff” going on, but at 18? Picked the best fit at the time.
It doesn’t appear that the survey makers weighted their survey correctly. They report that the respondents were 53% male, 47% female. That is not the right breakdown for new college graduates. In fact, it’s way off. About 60% of bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women. If they got that wrong, we can’t trust any other of their numbers and these survey results should be thrown in the trash.
You’re assuming that a person’s sex is relevant to their satisfaction level, or their financial need for college. It may or may not be a factor, but you’d need more evidence to say that survey results need to be adjusted to account for that.
No, I’m assuming that a sample that’s 53% male is not representative of a group that’s 60% female. Their gender might be relevant to their satisfaction level or their financial need, or it might not, but this is not a random sample. And if it’s not a random sample, then the results are uninteresting.
If they’re not getting a random sample as far as gender, they’re also not getting a random sample as to parental income or anything else, because they don’t know what they’re doing.
Isn’t it only a problem if you are trying to extrapolate the results to be representative of college students nationally? If you aren’t trying to extrapolate the results, and are just reporting them for what they are ( Which itself may be interesting) I don’t doubt they accurately portray the answers received.
If someone presents me with a sample that is grossly unrepresentative of the group they’re purporting to sample, it’s not up to me to prove that the sample is bad. It’s bad, unless they give me convincing reasons to believe it’s not bad. The burden of proof is on them, not me, and that burden is not met here.
If they’re so sloppy about gender, they’re going to be equally sloppy about income and geographical area.
Only if you are trying to make more of the results than presented. This is similar to me asking my college kid, how do all your friends feel about their major? The results can be interesting to me without being scientifically valid or representative of all college kids in America.
You don’t need a survey to measure “how many college kids wish they’d chosen a different school”. You have actual numbers- transfers- which presumably is not just who wishes they’d chosen differently, but kids motivated enough to actually do something about it.
There is so much sloppy research out there about higher ed. I’m with the good Cardinal here; why add more sloppy and potentially meaningless research to the pile?
Again, this is the higher ed version of the old Cosmo studies “Is your boyfriend the one?” If there is a core population in the US- let’s call it the chronically unhappy- who ALWAYS wish they’d chosen a different option, how is it interesting or relevant that a third of graduating seniors wish they’d chosen differently, especially if the study was sloppy, not set up with appropriate sampling protocols, etc? Maybe no matter what the subject is, a third of adults always pine for the road not taken, and are unhappy with the one they have chosen?
I know plenty of current and just graduated college kids who wish they’d chosen differently but not a single one of these was a surprise to me. The shy introvert heads off to a college with a huge percentage of Greek students because Mom wants her to pledge her old sorority. Kid doesn’t get a bid at ANY sorority, not just Mom’s, won’t go to parties where she doesn’t know anyone, wishes she’d gone to our state flagship where she knew a ton of kids from HS. The math genius who ends up at the local branch of our state college system (where the only math classes are intended for accounting majors or Ed majors who want to teach math). etc. Parents didn’t save a dime for college; income too high for aid; kid’s list wasn’t appropriate for a merit heavy strategy (but the parents would have balked at their EFC anyway).
I seem to know all the surprises then. The valedictorian math star who crashed and dropped out; the introvert wallflower who blossomed into a sales star. Kids change a lot.
You can’t trust a survey of 2000 students based on questions about methodology – but it’s ok to choose a college based on its reported SAT range, and to structure a college search around US News rankings?
Or rely on anecdotal information reported on places like CC? (Like “chances” threads? or the answers that get thrown out everytime someone posts a College X v. College Y question?)
Why focus on gender balance of the sample? Why not worry about its under-representation of public colleges vs. private? Or the fact that it seems to be skewed slightly toward wealthier students, since the reported average student loan debt is only 90% of the figure reported by TICAS?
I think you might be focused too narrowly on the statistics rather than the broader message this survey has for people who are making decisions about college choice and costs at the outset.
It’s an easy indicator. If they got that wrong, they got the whole thing wrong. No need to dig deeper. If I did dig deeper, I’m confident I’d find they also got the income levels wrong, and the geographic areas wrong, and the different types of schools wrong. But I don’t have to do that, because I already know the whole thing is wrong.
It’s like reading a paper. If the first paragraph is illiterate and illogical, I don’t need to waste my time reading the rest of it. It will be bad, but I don’t need to read it and find out exactly how bad it is.
Well, yes, but if I’m not trying to extrapolate the results to be representative, then what am I doing? If they wanted to provide me with a guess, why did they do a survey? Why not just guess, or ask three people, if that’s the enterprise? It’s cheaper, and equally as valid.